The faces of masculinity and femininity on the early Restoration stage: A study of five actors.
Item
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Title
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The faces of masculinity and femininity on the early Restoration stage: A study of five actors.
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Identifier
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AAI3127860
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identifier
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3127860
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Creator
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Danby, Jennifer Renee.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Judith Milhous
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Literature, English
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Abstract
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This dissertation focuses on the work of five early Restoration actors: Charles Hart, Michael Mohun, Edward Kynaston, Rebecca Marshall, and Elizabeth Boutell, all leading performers in the King's Company between the years 1660 and 1678. In 1660, women for the first time joined the commercial theatre companies in London, thus making the Restoration a major crucible for the study of bodies, gender, and actors' lines of business, or "types." This study argues that companies with men and women are different than companies comprised only of men because the real bodies of actors affect the kinds of roles written for them to perform. Further, the embodiment of roles by particular actors shapes the ways in which these roles are played and perceived. The body is always culturally encoded, and watching a woman play a role collapses the distance between real and fiction at the level of bodies. Mixed gender casts change the shape of "lines," plays, and the construction of masculinities and femininities on stage.;The primary evidence used in the study is the ninety-five plays for which we have recorded roles for these actors. All five actors embodied roles in revived and new plays. Other evidence includes records of contemporary audience response; anecdotes; eulogies; gossip; legal documents; lampoons; and portraiture.;The Restoration marked the birth of new modern subjects on stage, allowing for new constructions of femininities once women were embodying roles. Further, there was interplay between old and new constructions of masculinities. Many of the leading hero roles were decidedly modern subjects, possessed of a highly developed interiority and a bourgeois sense of being self-made men. In contrast, other leading male roles were more traditional and harkened back to a dying, feudal world. The contrast between these "lines" of new man and traditional man is an example of the interplay between pre-modern and modern subjectivities. The presence of the modern female subject and of the new modern male hero are evidence of new constructions of masculinities and femininities on stage after the Restoration, and of the close relationship between actor and the "types" he or she embodied.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
